corporate crime

The headlines blaze criminal charges for SAC Capital Advisors, a wayward hedge fund. Yet if one reads the Southern district of New York indictment, it is fairly obvious the owner is getting off the hook.

Have you ever noticed that large corporations can get away with pretty much anything? Over and over again a major scandal breaks and in the end the fines are pennies on the dollar for the profits gained by these nefarious financial activities.

Banks can launder money with impunity and the consequences are a small fine in comparison to the profits made. No matter how egregious there are no criminal chargers or revoking of the bank's charter.

The British bank Standard Chartered said on Thursday that it expected to pay $330 million to settle claims by United States government agencies that it had moved hundreds of billions of dollars on behalf of Iran.

No one can ferret out the economic and tax outrage like David Cay Johnston. His new book, The Fine Print exposes more shafting of the U.S. middle class through fees, contracts and taxes, this time all buried in the details. Johnston tallies up all of the fees, overcharges and gifts to corporations to show small font corruption costs each American family of four about $2,390 per year.

Most of us know we do not have government by and for the people. Johnston documents the never ending collusion between corporate America and government. That's all government, federal, state, local and even the court system working not for the national interest, but for corporate America's interests. The book is front loaded with all sorts of outrage which should get your blood boiling. No political party and their agendas are spared.

Did you know state and local governments give corporations at least $70 billion per year in rebates and tax breaks? Some corporations get over 90% of new facilities paid for by taxpayers. Did you know corporations get massive state and local tax givebacks on the promise of a few jobs? State and local governments pay hundreds of millions of dollars for a few jobs which pay little, if the company bothers to hire any Americans at all. One deal for Verizon amounted to paying $3.1 million dollars per job promised by the company.

This evening's episode of Harry's Law literally takes on the banks and uses the show, as a Populist soapbox. The plot contrasts how a homeless, foreclosed on, single mother, turned bank robber, gets 20 years, yet if one is incorporated and has lobbyists, then one gets $7.7 trillion in Federal Reserve loans. The episode is below.

The shit has hit the fan and Lehman Brothers was busy cooking the books before they imploded. Where have we seen this before? Let's see, we had Enron, Worldcom, Citigroup, accounting scandals, AIG scandals and here we are.

Maybe we got a bail out because it is within bankruptcy court these discoveries are made. With a Lehman Rescue would we ever have known this latest rip off and scam?

Below is a Dylan Ratigan show clip, where he explains what Lehman Brothers did, in a nice visual and analogy so you can grasp the magnitude.